"Donna Air gave birth to daughter Freya in September".
Official photo of this loonie from BBC News.
Posted on 11/10/2003 3:22:29 PM PST by aculeus
Television presenter Donna Air and her zoo-owner boyfriend Damian Aspinall intend to place their daughter in the care of a gorilla.
The couple plan to put Freya, who was born in September, in the gorilla enclosure at Howletts Zoo near Canterbury, Kent.
They will then let her be carried off by the female of the group.
Neither parent has any qualms about letting their daughter be taken off despite five keepers being killed by animals at Howletts and its sister park, Port Lympne, since 1980.
Mr Aspinall told the Evening Standard: "It is a ritual. I'll probably give her to the dominant female who will take her off and introduce her to the others."
The multi-millionaire said his two other daughters, Clary, 11, and Tansy, 14, had also been introduced to the gorillas at the zoo in the same way.
Both he and Miss Air approve of the plan and do not believe their daughter will be in any danger.
He said: "Why would I not trust them? I know them, I grew up with them. They are my friends."
Mr Aspinall took over running Howletts when his father, who encouraged close contact between animals and their keepers, died.
Since 1980 three keepers have been killed by tigers and two crushed to death by elephants at the two zoos.
But gorillas are known for their gentle treatment of babies and children.
Miss Air and Mr Aspinall have been together for more than two years and recently made a documentary together about releasing gorillas into the wild in Africa.
"Donna Air gave birth to daughter Freya in September".
Official photo of this loonie from BBC News.
So is the electric chair.
I would also entertain a vote to remove their children from their custody. They are seriously disturbed.
If these people have "introduced" two other of their children in this same way and they're alive and well, I don't have a problem with it...and if they don't sue someone if it goes wrong. It's weird, but there are some strange people in this world who do nuttier things than this.
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Mom & Dad. |
Friday 30 June 2000Dying Aspinall ‘wanted one of his zoo tigers to kill him’
By Neil Tweedie
JOHN ASPINALL enjoyed risk, both as a society gambler and casino owner, but it was the beauty and danger of wild animals that most fascinated him.
He lavished millions on his two zoos and was one of the most successful conservationists in the world. But his record as a breeder of gorilla, tiger and rhino was to be overshadowed by several fatal accidents.
Added to the controversy was an element of intrigue. Aspinall had been a long and loyal friend of the 7th Earl of Lucan - “Lucky” Lucan of the Mayfair set. Despite repeated denials, he was never able to shake off speculation that he had somehow helped the peer to flee the country following the murder of Lucan’s nanny in 1974.
Aspinall, who recently celebrated his 74th birthday, died at his home in Belgravia. He had fought cancer of the jaw for almost two years and had been aware for months that his condition was terminal. His friend, Taki Theodoracopulos, the columnist, said he would have preferred a swift death in the tiger compound at Howletts rather than the slow decline he was forced to endure.
Mr Theodoracopulos said: “He was fearless. He would have liked to have gone out with a tiger. I know he tried to recently but the tigers would not go for him.” He said of Aspinall: “Never have gambling profits been put to better use. The care and breeding of wild animals was his life’s work.”
Aspinall, he said, was a man with an impeccable sense of style. “When he was running the Clermont, most of the casinos in London were running call girl services for clients. Aspers wouldn’t - not on moral grounds but because it was inelegant and vulgar.”
The millionaire is survived by his wife Sarah and children from two of his three marriages - sons Damian and Bassa and daughter Amanda. He also has two stepsons, Jason and Amos. Last night, James Osbourne, his half-brother, said his two wild animal parks - Howletts, near Canterbury, and Port Lympne, near Folkestone, Kent - would continue to be run by the John Aspinall Foundation “in the manner and philosophy of their founder”.
John Aspinall was born in India in 1926, the product of an extramarital affair by his mother under the nose of her husband, a colonel. Aspinall was unaware of his true parentage until adulthood, when he was told that his father was in fact a general. He started gambling while a student at Jesus College, Oxford. His maverick temperament had already earned him expulsion from Rugby. He missed his finals for a day at the races. The fortune that allowed him to indulge his love of wild animals was made in gambling. During the Fifties he ran illegal gaming clubs with his mother, mainly for friends.
Legitimacy came with the Clermont Club, which was to become the home of the Mayfair set, that band of wealthy upper class buccaneers including James Goldsmith and Lord Lucan. Aspinall’s association with Lucan was to make him the centre of continuing press speculation following the peer’s disappearance in 1974 after the murder of Sandra Rivett, the Lucan children’s nanny, at the family home in London. It was believed that Lucan’s wife was the intended target.
To his dying day, Aspinall insisted that Lucan had done the decent thing and took his own life, probably by drowning himself in the Channel. “He [Lord Lucan] tied a stone around his body and scuttled the powerboat he kept at Newhaven and down he went. I think it’s a very brave thing,” Aspinall told The Telegraph earlier this year.
Despite Aspinall’s protestations, his death is unlikely to quell speculation that he, or another friend, helped Lucan to flee the country. Aspinall’s first wins bought a flat in Belgravia. He built an enclosure in the garden for a tiger, two bears and a capuchin monkey. He was walking the tiger one night when it killed a local dog. Aspinall walked on and did not breath a word.
In 1957, a substantial win on the Caesarewitch allowed him to buy Howletts, a Palladian mansion near Canterbury. By 1973, breeding successes were such that he needed to open another zoo, at nearby Port Lympne. His most controversial policy was encouraging keepers to develop close relationships with the animals.
But there was a price. In 1980, Aspinall was forced to shoot a Siberian tigress that killed two keepers at Howletts. Four years later a keeper was crushed to death by an Indian bull elephant in Port Lympne. In 1994 the head keeper at Howletts was killed by a Siberian tiger.
Earlier this year, Darren Cockrill, a keeper, was crushed by an elephant in its enclosure at Port Lympne. He was concerned about the future of the zoos. Aspinall said recently: “They [my family] will be landed with something that loses, at the moment, £2.5 million.”
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2000.
Of course. Why else would it be announced in advance?
Oh, good Lord - the feckless Aspinalls hanging around with the feckless Taki Cokespoonopolous. It's like a giant sucking black hole of worthlessness...
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